Fortunately, we have a good start on this because of our enormous plant capacity and because of the equipment on hand from the last war.  For example, many combat ships are being returned to active duty from the “mothball fleet” and many others can be put into service on very short notice.  We have large reserves of arms and ammunition and thousands of workers skilled in arms production.

In many cases, however, our stocks of weapons are low.  In other cases, those on hand are not the most modern.  We have made remarkable technical advances.  We have developed new types of jet planes and powerful new tanks.  We are concentrating on producing the newest types of weapons and producing them as fast as we can.

This production drive is more selective than the one we had during World War II, but it is just as urgent and intense.  It is a big program and it is a costly one.

Let me give you two concrete examples.  Our present program calls for expanding the aircraft industry so that it will have the capacity to produce 50,000 modern military planes a year.  We are preparing the capacity to produce 35,000 tanks a year.  We are not now ordering that many planes or that many tanks, and we hope that we never have to, but we mean to be able to turn them out if we need them.

The planes we are producing now are much bigger, much better, and much more expensive than the planes we had during the last war.

We used to think that the B-17 was a huge plane, and the blockbuster it carried a huge load.  But the B-36 can carry five of these blockbusters in its belly, and it can carry them five times as far.  Of course, the B-36 is much more complicated to build than the B-17, and far more expensive.  One B-17 costs $275,000, while now one B-36 costs $3 1/2 million.

I ask you to remember that what we are doing is to provide the best and most modern military equipment in the world for our fighting forces.

This kind of defense production program has two parts.

The first part is to get our defense production going as fast as possible.  We have to convert plants and channel materials to defense production.  This means heavy cuts in civilian uses of copper, aluminum, rubber, and other essential materials.  It means shortages in various consumer goods.

The second part is to increase our capacity to produce and to keep our economy strong for the long pull.  We do not know how long Communist aggression will threaten the world.

Only by increasing our output can we carry the burden of preparedness for an indefinite period in the future.  This means that we will have to build more power plants and more steel mills, grow more cotton, mine more copper, and expand our capacity in many other ways.

The Congress will need to consider legislation, at this session, affecting all the aspects of our mobilization job.  The main subjects on which legislation will be needed are: